Methodology

This criterion has been created with the pilot iniative of the QS Graduate Employability Rankings. It involves summating the number of official partnerships a university has with employers, and ranking all universities accordingly. It is based on the belief that universities which can successfully collaborate with influential employers, providing their students with work experience, funding and openings to demonstrate research initiative, will function as a boost the employability of their students. Examples of partnerships include fast-track job applications, internship offers, and work placements – all of which increase student proximity to employers and are proven to enhance employability.

QS also mapped on Scopus the academic yield that research partnerships produced, awarding extra points for partnerships with the top 500 companies in the world and top additional regional companies according to revenue, that produced at least 3 papers in the past 5 years.

We only considered distinct companies for this indicator, and excluded universities and governments (including ministries and other agencies controlled by governments) in this first edition. After a thorough validation by our analysts to ensure the existence of such partnerships in the first place, the numbers were converted into a ratio between the number of partnerships with employers and the number of Full Time Equivalent (FTE) Faculty Staff, using the same dataset as the latest QS World University Rankings.